It was shoes.

Dear readers, I believe I owe you an answer I promised you a few weeks ago.

The answer?

It was shoes.

Delicious, disgusting shoes.

That’s what finally motivated Lily to take those first tentative steps.

I was hanging out with her the morning of January 30th (10 months old), and she crawled over to some of her shoes and put them in her mouth.

She LOVES to gnaw on shoes.

SO gross.

Gross gross gross.

I think she knows that I find that one of the grossest things in the world.

Just ask Michael.  I really have a thing about the bottoms of shoes and thinking they are just disgusting.

For example, if he’s sitting next to me somewhere and crosses his leg so that the foot of the crossed leg is on my side, I can’t relax because I know eventually he’ll fidget (he’s a real fidgeter) and the bottom of that shoe will touch my leg.

Gross gross gross.

Maybe it’s from spending too many hours in the movie theater when I was younger and hearing that disgusting, sticky sound as your sneakers stick to the half-inch of dried coke and candy stuck on the floor.

Gross gross gross.

So…um…where was I before I started revealing my deepest and most bizarre fears?

Right, so Lily likes to chomp on shoes.

I am very much in the anti-shoe-chomping camp.

So when she started chomping her shoe that day, I put it up on a chair next to me.  She used me for support to stand up, and stared longingly at that shoe, only a short distance away.  Too far to bridge the gap using her arms for support.  But so tantalizingly close, that I guess she finally figured it was silly to get down, crawl half a step, and then have to get right back up.

So she took the plunge and shuffled one tiny step without any support until she could reach the chair. 

Yay, Lily!  She made it!

And then stuffed the shoe right back in her mouth.

So it was with pride and horror that I celebrated Lily’s long-awaited first step.  Since then, as you now know, she has taken more steps, with increasing distances between objects/people.  On occasion, she can sometimes even get up on her feet without having an object to pull up on or use for support.

Yay, Lily!

Anyway, we staged an elaborate and dramatic representation of her first step earlier this week (umm…actually, I was just taking a picture of her in a dress since we REALLY are making this “dress week” as mentioned in an earlier post, and she realized there were shoes on the ottoman…as you can tell, she really hasn’t learned much about how important it is not to chomp on shoes).

Ta da! / Ugh.

 

Cruel and unusual punishment

To the long list of things I didn’t know about babies you can add the fact that although baby girls look adorable in a sweet little girly dress, said dress can also really tick a baby off if that baby is trying to learn how to crawl and keeps kneeling on the dress, thus preventing the baby from going anywhere other than face first into the floor.

So although I had lots of sweet little girly dresses for Lily, any dresses in sizes she’d wear while in the crawling stage (from November on) have been sadly neglected in our closet.  On the plus side, I have a vigorous crawler on my hands.  On the downside, she probably gets asked how old “he” is more often than is strictly necessary, as men apparently do not realize that hot pink pants and a multitude of flowers do not scream “BOY!” even if it’s pants instead of a dress.  Our follicly challenged progeny has learned to take it all in stride, batting her baby blues sweetly at these clueless people, ignoring their insults, secure in her femininity and the fact that she does not, as of yet, speak English.

But today I was frustrated.

Today I saw her closet.

I saw those dresses.

I saw the wasted money on beautiful things that she had never worn.

I saw the un-bestowed compliments she could have garnered in her pretty little dresses.

And I saw the weather report that said it would be a little warmer than it had been lately, and most of her winter clothes were too warm except for these neglected dresses.

So I picked a dress.

And I crammed her in it (because apparently it really wasn’t in her size anymore, but I bought it, dang it, and she had only worn it for 20 minutes at my brother’s house in November before I realized that it was impossible for her to crawl in and was bugging the stuffing out of her).

I know.

I am cruel.

Don’t believe me?

Well this is what putting her in a dress forces her to do.  The indignity.

So she was forced to get around like this all day (except when we were in a shopping cart spotting disco balls and flags). 

Well, not all day. 

Because, you see, I think I finally annoyed her into getting a move on. 

Motivated her, if you wish to frame it more kindly. 

See?

Well, look at that…I think it’s dress week!

You don’t say…

So, apparently this whole “first word” thing is a lot trickier to identify than I knew.

I guess I never thought about it much, but somewhere in the back of my mind I must have figured that babies make a lot of noises and then one day let loose that long-awaited first word and everyone whirls around to exclaim, “Did that baby just say, ‘hippopotamus?’”

Well, folks, I’m starting to think it’s a lot fuzzier than that (the notion…not the hippopotamus…well, probably that too, but I digress).

Lily will now repeat lots of sounds when we’re talking about something or showing her something.  Show her a pom pom and tell her what it is, and you might get a lot of “pa pa pa” sounds as she tries to imitate you.  Show her a duck, call it a duck, and you might get a lot of “duh duh duh” sounds. 

She is also making sounds on her own to try to communicate and draw our attention to various items of importance (to an 11 month old).  She makes a lot of “ba” noises when she sees things that should be “ba”-d at: balls, balloons, etc.  She also makes more of a “buh” sound for birds which she does a LOT since her room has a bird theme.  She makes “f” sounds when she sees flags.  She pointed to the top shelf of her closet and shouted “baba” when there was a new baby doll she hadn’t seen before.  She used to cry “mamamamama” when she was upset, and has more recently been saying “mama” (sometimes with a few extra ma’s thrown in) to get my attention – but I don’t count this as a first real WORD exactly.  I really think she does say “bye bye” sometimes when I tell her to wave “bye bye” to someone, but that one’s just too easy and she doesn’t say it on her own.

She still loves to point ALL DAY LONG (as in, I name things for her ALL DAY LONG as she repeatedly points to things and looks at me questioningly if I do not supply the name as expected).  Did I mention we do this ALL DAY LONG?  Let’s just call her an “inquisitive” little child.

Anyway, her newfound skill of making slightly less random noises would have been obvious to anyone following us around while shopping today.  In one store, you would have heard her shouting “BA BA BA BA BA!” paired with VIGOROUS pointing toward the ceiling to communicate, “Holy moley, Mommy, did you see that there is a freakin’ disco ball suspended from the ceiling in this store?!?!?!?”  This was actually followed by about 5 minutes of “FFF FFF FFF FFF!” paired with vigorous pointing and tracking of the flags also hanging from the ceiling in the same store.  We had a hard time leaving this store, clearly, and when we did finally get out of there and the clerk asked Lily if she could wave bye bye, Lily looked at her, then looked at the ceiling, pointed, and went “FFF FFF FFF FFF!”  Apparently she did not understand how one could take the time to wave when there were flags to be spotted! 

So I know you’re wondering - has she had her first word yet?  Who knows…I’m going to play this one conservatively and wait to call it.

But sometimes it’s what you don’t say that counts…

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

Progress

Well, at least I finally hooked up my camera.

Still no laptop, though…hopefully soon.

Here are some recent pictures to tide you over.

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Sand on the half shell…the perfect picnic for our first beach trip!

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She REALLY likes to point now.  At EVERYTHING. 

 

 

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On a related note, if you have a job open for a professional kitty-cat spotter, she would like to apply.  She would bring to the job her boundless enthusiasm and tireless persistence like you’ve never seen before in a professional kitty-cat spotter.  She would tell you repeatedly, day in and day out, exactly where your kitty-cats were at all times.  Rest easy, knowing that your kitty-cats have been well spotted.  And re-spotted.  And re-spotted.  You get the picture…

 

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She still loves playing ball, but has graduated to a slightly larger one!

 

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Still happy.

 

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Oh…and did I mention she took her first steps?  No videos yet, but we’ll get some. 

So what motivated her to finally take that leap of faith?  Stay tuned (it has nothing to do with these pictures, so there!)!

 

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Finally, here’s her first art!

 

So far, she shows every bit the aptitude her mother does for drawing.

Yikes. 

At least I don’t gnaw on my crayons.